


Still Missing You

by Cadensaurus (orphan_account)



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: 2012!Phan, Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M, yeah it's been done a million times before
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-04
Updated: 2016-02-04
Packaged: 2018-05-18 05:18:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5899801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/Cadensaurus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just a short ficlet of 2012!Phan being angsty and then hopefully making up, kind of how I think it might have gone</p>
            </blockquote>





	Still Missing You

It's the beginning of March, 2012 and nothing has ever seemed more wrong. Phil is cut off from him and Dan's sitting and getting stupid, stinkingly drunk with the remnants of their New Years celebration, a medley of wine and vodka and rum.

So far he's had four drinks and it's not really enough to obliterate his mind. Not when Phil's in the other room and they've barely spoken to each other.

Dan doesn't know how it happened, just that it happened, that one day they went from being Dan and Phil, best friends and boyfriends who lived together, to Dan and Phil, mostly best friends who lived together but started bickering and decided on a break, to Dan and Phil, who bickered all the time and lived together but it was taut and wrong, and they'd broken up for real. That was two and a half months ago.

He misses Phil more than he can put into words but Phil doesn't want anything to do with him, he thinks. After all, after dinner, Phil disappeared from the room and hasn't once come to see what Dan's up to, which is not the way of the old Phil, who would have been either asking Dan to come hang out with him or even if they weren't, checking on Dan every couple of hours to see how he was doing.

But Phil's not talking to Dan. Dan is alone in his sorrows, wallowing, and he takes another drink from his glass of orange juice and vodka.

Time passes. Drinks slide down his throat. He's on his sixth now, eyes bleary. He thinks maybe he's had enough to drink if he doesn't want to be ill. It's half past one in the morning almost, the time slipping from 1:26 to 1:27 on his phone as he stares at it.

He hears a noise.

He turns and finds Phil standing, leaning against the wall, looking at him. “Dan?” Phil asks, and it's the first time in weeks that Dan's heard that much emotion with Dan's name containing it, and he swallows his drink in a hurry.

“Phil,” he says, and Phil evaluates him, shakes his head.

“What's wrong?” Phil asks. Because Phil still can read him as well as Dan knows himself. Dan puts up his barriers, shrugs.

“I'm fine.”

Phil crosses over to him. “No you're not. You're clearly hurting, stop putting on a strong front. Look at you, your shoulders are hunched together, your fingers are twisted up. I know Dan Howell worry signs when I see them.”

 _Fuck off_ , Dan thinks. _You don't get to reassure me when you're the one making me sad in the first place._

He doesn't say that. He doesn't say anything. Phil comes to sit beside him, lifts up what's left of the drink and examines it.

“How many of these have you had?” He asks.

Dan shrugs again. “Three. Plus some wine.”

“Ah, so you're an emotional drunk Dan,” Phil says and for a moment, it's like there's no fighting between them almost every day, it's just Phil teasing him, and Dan misses that, and he puts up an even colder front towards Phil.

“I'm not an _emotional_ drunk Dan, I'm just a drunk Dan, now go away and do whatever you were doing, you clearly don't care enough to see how I'm doing anyways.”

Phil blinks twice, as if stunned. “I came down to see you, didn't I?”

Dan shrugs yet again. It's his go-to gesture when he doesn't know what to say. “Probably just on your way to get a glass of water before bed or something, I just happened to be in your pathway, right?”

So he's a selfish prick sometimes who acts like a snot on occasion when he's pissy. Sue him.

Phil lifts the drink to his mouth and drains what's left of it. “Jeez, trying to actually destroy your liver? Add some more mixer next time.”

“I can make my own drinks, thank you very much.” Dan snaps back. This is exactly what he didn't want today, another fight.

“I was just worried, because I hadn't heard from you all night, and I mean, I know we're not doing so great, but usually we still at least text a little or pass by each other and I just – I wanted to see if you were all right.”

“Fucking brilliant,” Dan mutters. “Now go to bed.”

Phil pauses, gets up. “I'll see you soon,” he says, and Dan doesn't bother asking what he means by that. Dan just waits until Phil's left the room before letting the single fucking tear, all dramatic and trash, that he's holding back, slide down his cheek, not bothering to wipe it away.

When he does make it to his bedroom that night, he doesn't bother to turn on the lights. He undresses down to his boxers, crashes into his bed drunkenly, shoves at the covers, crawls in, and-

\- is greeted by Phil who is sleeping in his bed.

“What the fuck.” Dan says out loud. “Phil, why the fuck are you in my bed?”

He does switch on the lights at this point, the fairy lights, just enough to illuminate Phil's porcelain-esque features, and that's almost the worst thing he could have done, because Phil half-asleep with his pale skin and dark hair and magnificent blue eyes is hard-hitting on Dan's drunken self, cast in the pale glow of fairy lights and shadows.

Phil peers up at him with a yawn. “I didn't want you to be alone tonight. I know we're off but – I want to fix things, Dan. I miss the old us.”

Dan can't stop it when he ushers out in a heavy whisper, “I miss the old us too. But we're over now, remember? You can't come sleep in my bed without your clothes on,” because he can see Phil's bare chest, he can feel that Phil's only wearing boxers the same way that Dan is.

“Maybe I want a new start,” Phil murmurs. “New us. It's a new year. We've got all this exciting stuff going on in front of us, maybe I want a new start to it all. I've been doing a lot of thinking and we've both been wrong about a lot of stuff but I don't think it's too much to work past.”

Dan's sitting there in bed, staring at Phil, who finally props himself up on one elbow and reaches for Dan's wrist, catches it, slides his thumb across the radius of it, or is that the ulna, Dan doesn't remember, but he suddenly cares because he wants to know which one it is. It feels important.

Dan closes his eyes as Phil touches him. It's been months without any kind of intimate touching between them, and this is the barest example of it, but he misses it so much.

Phil tugs at Dan. “Just – can we start over? We've got the BBC show, that's a new thing, and this new flat, and just – I want a new start. I'm not saying we haven't both screwed up in the past but can't we just try to work past it?”

Phil's pulling at Dan, pulling at him to lie down, and almost in a dream-like stupor, Dan does, resting his head on the pillows, staring at Phil who is only inches away, feeling the heat of Phil radiating off him underneath the blankets.

Dan has no answer. He wants it too but he's scared. He gets up the courage to say that much at least. “We've been going so wrong. What if we can't?”

Phil looks at him with a serious expression, one that seems sad. “We always did in the past. It's just these last few months – and I think we can fix it. I don't want to think we can't.”

God, he looks beautiful under the pale glow of the fairy lights and Dan knows he's staring at Phil, at his luminescence reflecting them.

Words clog up in Dan's throat. He's so tired, he's so drunk, he's so conflicted and torn between what he wants and what he's afraid of and everything seems too confusing and complicated.

Phil's hand slides from his wrist to his hip, and Phil tucks himself closer to Dan, and Dan inhales the scent of Phil, his shampoo and body wash and deodorant and something deep in his heart fractures.

“Okay,” he whispers, not even knowing what he means by okay, just that he can't carry on with the way things are.

“New start,” Phil whispers. “Let's just at least try.” Dan closes his eyes, focuses on Phil's touch on his side. He wonders if he'll regret this come the morning. He hopes he doesn't. He hopes they can have a fresh start, fix things.

It's all he really wants, but he just doesn't know if they can. He has to hope, though, if Phil wants it too, if Phil's willing to put in the effort, right?

If he can just focus on Phil's touch to his hip, maybe he can convince himself that everything will be alright, that tomorrow morning, they'll wake up and maybe start to repair the damage they've done to each other.

Right?

 


End file.
